Captivity (4 page)

Most ‘Graven can also use
crypta
on
the animal’s mind, but they are brought up with horses and learn to
ride long before their gift matures and becomes useful for
practical applications. There would be no point in my trying any
such tricks on a horse, Dominic said, if I was unfamiliar with the
basics of riding and did not know the appropriate “thoughts” to
send to my mare.

Dominic is a good teacher, passionate about
any skill he enjoys, and patient with me because of our love. In a
short time he decided I had progressed far enough to ride outside
the yard. Before we went, Dominic sat me down and gave me a stern
lecture. “Every rider falls off at least once,” he said, holding my
hands in the way that initiates full mental communion between
telepaths. “Good riders fall off more than once, because they are
attempting to do more than just stay in the saddle. They are
learning to move with the horse, in its rhythm, and it takes a few
spills until you get the hang of it.”

I stared into my husband’s opaque metallic
third eyelids, unable to prevent myself from smiling at his
seriousness. Dominic squeezed my hands in reassurance. “When you
fall off, Amalie,” he said, “you must try to get back on the horse
immediately. If you let the horse throw you, it will think it has
won the battle for control. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Dominic,” I said. I did not intend to
fall off. My goal was definitely just to stay on the horse. I would
please Dominic by going through with the lessons, but I doubted I
would ever become the kind of rider he wanted me to be. “I’ll lay
me down and bleed a little while, then I’ll rise and fight again.”
I quoted the old ballad to make Dominic laugh.

As soon as we left the confines of the yard
my mare, excited by the first prospect of real freedom in over a
year, galloped off in celebration toward the woods, jumping a low
fence along the way. Of course I tumbled off, fortunately landing
on soft grassy ground, although with a thump that knocked the wind
out of me.

I lay there for a minute or two getting my
breath back, making sure I had sustained no real damage. It was
pleasant lying here, I discovered, with the fence and its companion
hedge providing both a windbreak and a screen from prying eyes at
Aranyi Fortress—much nicer than being perched far above the ground
on an unpredictable animal.

Dominic caught up with me then, leaping off
his prancing stallion to kneel beside me, carefully sliding an arm
under my neck to cradle my head. “Amalie,” he said, his voice low
and tense, “are you hurt? Can you speak, Amalie?” I felt his
crypta
in my mind as he probed for my consciousness.

I deliberately kept my eyes shut, sneaking
just a glimpse at his fierce unblinking gaze as he laid his head on
my chest to listen to my breathing. Then I sighed and fluttered my
outer eyelids. “Oh, Dominic,” I said. “I hurt only a little, here,”
taking his hand from beneath my head and holding it to my breast.
“And here, I think,” guiding his free hand under my raised skirts
that had exposed my legs as I fell.

“That is a cruel trick to play,” Dominic
said, his voice muffled as he kissed my neck.

Cruel, perhaps. Also unoriginal. But
effective. We did no more riding that day, other than the short jog
home for the midday meal.

After that, Dominic knew it would be better
for someone else to teach me, someone whose emotions would not be
aroused by my mishaps. Stefan was pressed into service. But Stefan
found it difficult giving orders to his lover’s wife, old enough to
be his mother, and when I fell off under his supervision he was as
distressed as Dominic had been, although not as amorous.

Eventually we had given up the lessons. Once
Jana was ready to learn we would hire a riding master. Until then
my skills were adequate for most of our journeys, where the horses
must walk on the steep mountain trails. I would never be someone
who chose riding for recreation. When Dominic wished to hunt or to
ride for pleasure he had Stefan for companionship. And should
Stefan decide to fall off occasionally on soft ground, he had my
blessing.

My horse came to a sudden stop and I woke up
to the dreadful present. It was full dark. We had ridden through
the day and the evening, into the night. I could not hazard a guess
as to how far we had come, and could only assume the direction we
had taken was northwest, into the mountains, above the imaginary
line that marks the edge of Aranyi territory, into the no-man’s
land of the northern mountains, beyond the reach of ‘Graven
Assembly and its laws. Go far enough, and if you survive the cold
and the wind and the predatory animals, you will reach the renegade
realm of Andrade on the other side.

Val whimpered and struggled in the pack on my
back. “Are we home, Mama?” he asked. “I’m hungry. I want to go to
bed.”

Jana sat, still upright, on her pony, a few
feet ahead. She turned in the saddle to look around. “Of course
we’re not home, stupid,” she said to Val. “We’re at the bandits’
lair
.” She growled the last word the way I did when telling
the children fairy tales.

“I want to go home,” Val said. “I don’t like
bandits.” He started to cry.

Reynaldo dismounted and stood beside us in
his menacing way. Val howled louder at the sight of him. “Shut up,
you spoiled ‘Graven brat,” Reynaldo said. There was no inflection
in the voice, just a chilling flat finality. He raised his hand,
whether to strike or to lift Val from the carrying pack I didn’t
wait to find out.

I dismounted quickly on the other side,
putting the mare between me and Reynaldo. My feet tangled in the
stirrups and my skirts and I nearly fell, but I clutched the saddle
for all I was worth and found my footing. My boots hit the rounded,
uneven lumps of cobblestones, as in the courtyard at Aranyi. There
was a tumbledown wall and gate through which we must have ridden.
Ahead I could make out the outline of a large stone facade and a
door-like entrance, with faint light showing. Whatever it was, the
“lair” was at least better than the cave or camp I had assumed was
our destination.

I worked my arms and shoulders out of the
straps of the carrying pack and shifted Val to my arms. He always
calmed down if I held him. He could walk, of course, but I wanted
to protect him as much as possible from the psychotic Reynaldo and
the rest of his band of thugs.

“We can’t go home tonight, sweetheart,” I
said to Val with what little composure I could manage. “It’s too
late. We’ll have some supper here and go to bed.” I tried to make
it sound like a stopover at a neighbor’s house on a journey. Surely
the bandits would have to feed us something, and they would prefer
to let us sleep than keeping us awake all night to be watched and
guarded.

Someone shoved me from behind and I stumbled
forward. My legs could hardly work after so long in the saddle and
I was forced to call on my remaining
crypta
strength to hold
myself together. Jana pressed close beside me, her brave front
crumbling rapidly in the face of so much peril and so little
comfort. I shifted Val to my left arm and hip, took Jana’s hand
with my right, smiling down at her. “Think of how proud of you Papa
will be,” I whispered, “when you tell him about this
adventure.”

Jana looked up, her face brightening. “Papa
will save us,” she said. She searched for Reynaldo among the
shadowy forms surrounding us. “My papa is going to slit your gullet
from ear to ear.” She showed off the knowledge she had acquired in
untold hours spent hanging about whenever Dominic’s guards were
talking shop, recounting the last battle as they cleaned their
weapons. “My papa will hang you from a hook and string your guts up
like sausages.”

Reynaldo stared in astonishment at the words
that didn’t quite match the girl’s face and child’s voice, the
sober little travel dress. Then he laughed, and his men laughed
with him. “Watch your backs,” he shouted. “We have an enemy in our
midst.” He chucked Jana roughly under the chin. “I may not let you
go, little Amazon. I could use a daughter like you.”
Or a
wife
, I read the evil thought in his mind.

We were led through the entrance, into a
great hall. A hopeful sense of familiarity washed over me, quickly
followed by disappointment. The layout was like Aranyi Fortress,
like any nobleman’s house. This was a ruined stronghold, a castle
from the days, long ago, when there had been independent petty
kingdoms throughout the mountains—all of them swept away or
consolidated into the ‘Graven Coalition, the system of twelve
Realms entitled to representation in ‘Graven Assembly. Some gentry
families survived, like the Ormondes, the Ladakhs and the
Galloways, allied by treaty or marriage to one realm or another.
But if Dominic was going to rescue us by assault, he would have to
take a castle.

I coughed and blinked away tears. The hall
was smoky from a fire that sat on an improvised hearth in the
center of the room. The smoke meandered up to a hole in the roof.
The real fireplace, which would have a good chimney and flue to
draw the smoke away cleanly, was full of rubble—pieces of building
stones—and rubbish—broken pots, animal bones, clothes worn to
threads, beyond repair. The chimney must have collapsed, the stones
fallen in. Some goats and sheep were penned in two corners;
chickens and a ragged rooster pecked forlornly in a third. Dogs
roamed freely. The bandits had found themselves a castle, but they
used it as they would a cave, with no sense of how to live
indoors.

A crowd of onlookers surged around us, mostly
women and a few listless children, all bedraggled and filthy, worse
than the men. They pressed up eagerly to see what their men had
brought, their stench enough to make me gag in the enclosed air,
mixed with the smoke from the fire and the animals’ smell. Hands
pulled at my clothes and my hair as I tried to shield Jana beside
me and guard Val in front. Unwanted or unexpected physical touch is
disagreeable at best to telepaths, sometimes painful or sickening,
as it temporarily blocks the
crypta
’s electric circuit, but
I could not protect myself. My strength was gone and I had sworn
not to use my gift. There would be nothing I could do with it that
would be worth the cost of Reynaldo’s retribution for breaking that
promise.

A woman seized my left wrist, forcing me to
put Val down, making my gorge rise again with the disturbance to my
energy field. The strong hand pushed up my sleeve, exposing the
bright steel bracelet that Dominic had given me after Jana was
born. It was made in the understated ‘Graven fashion: a smooth
circle, with no clasp or catch, nor was it big enough to slide over
the hand. The idea behind it was simple and elegant: when first
given it was too big, but over time the electricity of the wearer’s
crypta
energy fused the molecules tighter, until there was
no way to remove it except with a blowtorch. Some law of physics
supposedly prevented the shrinkage from continuing indefinitely.
These days the bracelet was heavy but comfortable; most of the time
I forgot I was wearing it.

The woman’s eyes widened for a telltale
moment in her hard face as she felt the solid weight of the steel
and recognized a rare artisanal product. “Hey, Captain,” she
shouted, “why don’t we just take this? It’s worth as much as
anything her lord will pay.” I tried to wrench my arm free, but she
held tight. “Be still, my fine lady,” she said with a gap-toothed
leer, “or we’ll cut your hand off with it.”

Reynaldo hurried over at the loud words. “Let
go of her, Michaela.” When the woman continued to hold my wrist,
unwilling to lose contact with so much precious metal, he used his
crypta
on her. I could feel some of the overflow from his
inexpert technique, the pain that caused her to drop my arm and
clutch her stomach, doubling over as if she had been punched or
kicked. She knew better than to cry or complain, but lurched
unsteadily to a bench and sat down, heaving.

“Listen to me,” Reynaldo shouted to the
group. “No one will touch my prize, not the woman or the girl or
the little brat.” He stared around the room, commanding attention.
“We will make their lord buy them back, and Margrave Aranyi will
not pay for damaged goods.”

Reynaldo strolled over to where Michaela sat
and she stood up hurriedly at his approach, expecting another
attack. He grabbed the woman by the hair, twisting it tightly,
forcing her to look up at him. “Don’t worry, my own greedy whore,”
he said with a kind of affectionate contempt, “before we let them
go, we will have the bracelet, and the fine clothes.” Michaela
smiled and nodded, frightened but appeased.

The bandit captain released the woman and
spoke louder for the benefit of the rest of the group. “We will all
share in the spoils. Everybody who obeys me, who helps, will get a
share.” He whirled around, trying to catch people behind him who
might not have heard his words or agreed to them. Everyone was
watching him closely, listening intently. “And anyone who
interferes will be punished. Do you understand?”

There was a cacophony of sound as men and
women and older children shouted their assent. Captain Reynaldo,
with his
crypta
and his paranoia, his intelligent planning
and his psychotic changes of mood, maintained control of this band.
If most of the men might have been content to rob and to rape, if
the women would have thought themselves fortunate to have a new
shift or a pair of boots, they were impressed that Reynaldo had
instead settled for nothing less than the unimagined wealth that
Aranyi ransom would bring. None of them was capable of thinking up
a coherent plan of this kind, much less carrying it out. I doubted
Reynaldo had thought his plan all the way through. But he had got
this far, and I must trust in Dominic to find a way to rescue us,
while husbanding my own dwindling energy to keep us safe until
then.